


Anything For You

by Alex_deMorra (Ergo_Sum)



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 19:47:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16226090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ergo_Sum/pseuds/Alex_deMorra
Summary: Here is October's Flash Fiction Challenge from Nathan Burgoine: https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/october-flash-fiction-draw/This month, we're working with horror (how fitting) at a blood drive (again...how fitting) and featuring, somehow, a frog?1000 words.Here's my story of a blood donor who gave a bit more than he'd planned to.





	Anything For You

The needle popped through the side of Keegan’s index finger.A second later, the warmth registered. First with the puncture and again when the red hemisphere was scraped from his skin onto a glass slide. The subsequent pounding was a separate thing from him and he thought that it might have been relief when another drop of blood escaped. No, it wasn’t relief. Relief wasn’t the right word. Relief was when an event released one from distress or, perhaps, anxiety. This was simply a release.

He watched the rogue drop travel on a short, crooked path over the inside seam of his knuckle before turning right and splashing onto the white calf-skin leather where his arm rested. A thought flashed into his consciousness. It was an odd thought, one that was entirely unlike his own mind. As soon as it came, it was gone. He was left only with the sense of it. Something about the small thread waking up, coming to life now that it had been quenched. The words didn’t make sense. They kept changing order and the more time slipped away from the moment, the more unsure he was that the thought had crossed his mind at all.

“Oh, sorry.” The nurse pinched gauze around the wound and hoisted it in the air. She had an efficient bun at the nape of her neck and a smile made up of a neat row of bottom teeth. Another nurse slipped out through a brushed steel door, taking his blood for some unseen examination.

The routine here wasn’t that different than the usual.

Keegan had given blood every few months since that campus blood drive his college basketball team organized several decades ago. There was always an interview, sample vials of blood, then the longer wait which involved squeezing a stress ball, followed up with orange juice or, if you were lucky, sprinkled donuts.

Different locations had reclining chairs of differing quality. All adhered to the unwritten rule for displaying motivational posters whose messages were at best kitsch. The unfortunate poster here—unfortunate because it was the only one and, as it was hung directly in front of him, he found it difficult to look away—was a sun-washed print of a young woman’s lips, soft and open-mouthed, leaning toward the frog in her hand. _You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince._

The nurse laughed at his frown. “Not a fan?”

He shuddered.

The story was supposed to be about the importance of keeping promises but it always struck him how, in eliciting a promise of getting tucked in bed for a night with a princess in exchange for retrieving her ball, this one was less about instilling a lesson in morality and more about negotiating away consent.

“We’re about to start. Are you comfortable?”

“As much as I can be.”

Keegan wasn’t outright uncomfortable. The reclining chairs supported his feet at just the right angle. The spartan decor in white and the same shades of green found in terrariums and National Geographic specials. It was the first time he gave blood in a private room.

Blood Life was about as luxurious of a blood center as he’d ever seen and, despite the crowd who showed up in the waiting area for today’s drive, he couldn’t sense another donor anywhere in the vicinity while he was behind these walls.

The thing he missed in all of this privacy was the sympathetic eye contact received as the needle slipped into his vein. Not from the nurse but from someone sitting across from him. He’d give the same someone else. _We’re all in this together_. That’s what the look meant. It reminded him he was doing something good. Not the lift weights, eat fiber variety. That was only for himself. This small act was about giving life. He could hardly think how spending any other hour of his time could be more important.

The second nurse returned, eyes alight with good news. “He’s a match!”

“Oh.” His nurse turned her attention back to him and time slipped. The idea popped in his head as she said it. “You have quite a rare blood type. Did you know?”

Keegan neither knew that fact nor was he able to respond to that question. At first, he thought it was something about the situation, something about the tone of her voice, or maybe the unknown intention behind it, that shocked him into some level of indecision that rendered him unable to find the right word to respond aloud.

This was not the case.

It was not the word he couldn’t identify. In fact, the word quickly became unimportant. Far less important was this word than the new realization that the reason he was unable to respond was because he was unable to move the muscles around his mouth. Unable to speak as his chair was wheeled through a door at the back of the room and into a deeper cavity of Blood Life. Not just that. It wasn’t just the muscles around his mouth that were no longer accessible to him. It was all of his muscles. He willed his arm to move, his leg, his torso. There was nothing.

“Oh look, Christopher,” crooned the voice from behind him. The nurse pushed his chair next to a small occupied bed. He and the occupant faced the same direction. The other end of the tube coming out of his arm was inserted into the limp arm of the bed’s inhabitant. “We were able to find you another donor, isn’t that wonderful?”

Another chair departed through the door he had just arrived through. The nurse squeezed Keegan’s stress ball, returning her attention to the boy outside his field view. “And if this one doesn’t work, there’s surely another match in the waiting room just waiting to give you life.” Softly, she added, “All for you, my special boy. Anything for you.”


End file.
